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1st Printing. Signed. 100 pages. Published in 2013. Rare Asghar Farhadi collectible set. A pristine copy of the Complete Screenplay of "The Past", signed by Asghar Farhadi, with a brand-new copy of the film itself on Blu-ray. Issued in a small and limited run for the exclusive use of Memento Films, the producer, and Sony Film Classics, the global distributor. Printed on pristine-white, archival stock paper in Paris to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Asghar Farhadi's "The Past" in a felicitous English translation. The Iranian film director's follow-up to his award-winning breakthrough, "A Separation" (2012). Farhadi's films are about human relationships as they unravel in the shadow of an invisible Iranian theocracy, which he can never directly criticize (although he does, ever so subtly, and therefore more effectively). Still, his films are not political at all (as say, Costa-Gavras'). It's not because he is restricted as such by the state, but because he has shown no interest thus far in politics as a film artist, either as its propagandist or critic, itself the most powerful statement an artist could ever make. Farhadi's films belie the Western truism that the "personal is political" as priveleged and self-aggrandizing. His films are instead, liberatingly personal. They are about fully realized characters whose lives mirror the spatial dimension of being caught in the middle, of being "in-between": Between joy and anguish, altruism and self-interest, creature comforts and daily struggles. His characters ARE in spite of, rather than thanks to, the ruling Ayatollahs. Whereas "A Separation" is relentless in a gut-wrenching way, "The Past" is meditative in an equally gut-wrenching way, demonstrating Farhadi's tonal range. He already has a considerable body of work behind him, not just two great films, set in Iran about Iranian characters for an Iranian audience that nevertheless has a transcendent appeal to a broader global audience. He is the greatest Iranian film director since the late great Abbas Kiarostami, but they have very little in common: Kiarostami was an elusive, ironic, humanist-cum-formalist auteur whereas Farhadi is a focussed, tragicomic, and riveting genre-dramatist. The vitality and power of his films will feel true to every serious moviegoer. It's as if we are watching real life unfold in real time, the pressing human issues presented to us un-mediated by intrusive film "style", "technique", or "special effects". They are organic dramas, not manufactured or formulaic as most (though not all) Hollywood assembly-line products are. That Farhadi is able to make his films at all, in Iran of all places, is a miracle. And he is an actor's director: "The Past" has luminous, career-peak performances by Ali Mosaffa, Berenice Bejo, and Tahar Rahim. An absolute "must-have" collectible, not just memorabilia, set for Asghar Farhadi collectors. This copy of the Complete Screenplay of "The Past" is very boldly, elaborately, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Asghar Farhadi. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Asghar Farhadi's signature is vintage, signed in meticulous-full, as opposed to the abbreviated and initialled ("A. F. ") specimen-signature that he has resorted to recently, just as Abbas Kiarostami ("A K") did before him. It comes with a brand-new copy of the film on Blu-ray. This title is a great film. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy (with Blu-ray) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Farhadi signed the screenplay, NOT the Blu-ray. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2012 for "A Separation", the very first Iranian film to win the award. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2017 for "The Salesman". "A Separation" was selected by a panel of British film critics, reviewers, and academic scholars as "The Best F. Seller Inventory # 20855
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